This invention relates generally to surgical instrument trays and more specifically to a tray system that is designed to house all of the operating instruments required for advanced endoscopic procedures, whether general, gynecologic or thoracic, in a logically organized fashion such that missing instruments may be readily identified prior to commencement of a procedure.
In all endoscopic surgical procedures, whether abdominal or thoracic, a group of operating instruments is required to perform an anticipated surgical procedure following a diagnostic procedure in which the surgeon employs an additional set of access instruments to gain access to the operative site. Protection and organization of such operating instruments is essential to the successful outcome of the surgical procedure. Damage to these sensitive instruments has a significant economic impact on a healthcare facility, both in terms of repair and replacement costs, as well as lost revenues due to case cancellations and surgeon discontent.
A number of so-called surgical instrument trays are known in the prior art. However, most of these prior art trays amount to nothing more than storage cases that are inconvenient, if not impossible, to use in the working environment of an operating room. Several known surgical instrument storage cases are simply covered shallow containers in which surgical instruments are randomly placed. Some of these shallow containers include foam rubber bottom linings in an attempt to protect the instruments stored therein. Another known surgical instrument storage case is capable of holding only six operative instruments, a number considered inadequate to complete a typical endoscopic surgical procedure. However, these six instruments are retained in stacked relationship with each other, thereby making acquisition of a particular instrument difficult, at best. Yet another known surgical instrument storage case provides only ten spaces for instruments having shaft diameters of five millimeters. Since various commercially available surgical operating instruments have shaft diameters of five, ten or twelve millimeters, any surgical tray system of value in an operating room environment must be able to accommodate instruments of all three of these sizes.
Silicon rubber inserts are available for positioning as desired on the bottom surface of certain types of these conventional shallow instrument trays to hold several instruments in fixed positions. This storage arrangement, like others in the prior art, results in haphazard positioning of the instruments, with the handles of some of the instruments at one end of the tray and those of others of the instruments at the opposite end of the tray, again making acquisition of a particular instrument difficult and subjecting the instruments to possible damage as the result of contact by adjacent instruments.
It is therefore the principal object of the present invention to provide a tray system for retaining a set of surgical instruments for convenient use in an operating room environment, organized according to their logical order of use by surgical personnel and in a way that protects them from damage, that permits easy identification of any missing instruments, and that also permits them to be easily sterilized without removing or otherwise disturbing their positions within the tray system.
This and other objects are accomplished in accordance with the illustrated preferred embodiment of the present invention by providing an enclosure base, a U-shaped instrument rack positioned within the enclosure base capable of suspending a complete set of operating surgical instruments by their shafts such that the handles of the instruments freely depend from their shafts, a flat operative assembly tray that may be locked into position on top of the enclosure base, above the U-shaped instrument rack, for retaining additional surgical instruments in positions that are identified by silkscreened outlines of those additional instruments, and a cover that may be locked into position on top of the operative assembly tray, thereby covering both the U-shaped instrument rack within the enclosure base and the flat operative assembly tray.